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OUR RULES

NO PHOTOSHOP REQUESTS -- If you want someone to edit a picture please post it here.

ONLY DIRECT LINKS TO IMAGES IN SUBMISSIONS -- Posts that are links to personal and video sites, blogs, tutorials, resources, portfolios and social media of any kind are all considered spam regardless of content. Those are allowed in the comments section but only when relevant to the OP's question. We have a zero tolerance policy towards spam of any kind - you spam we ban.

USE IMGUR if you need to link to an image for clarification purposes in both submissions and comments since other image hosts will likely get blocked by the automod. You may only use YouTube in a submission to clarify a type of problem that would be difficult to demonstrate using only pictures.

NO IMAGE SUBMISSIONS ASKING FOR CRITIQUE -- Generic titles like "How did I do?" or "How do I make this better?" won't cut it, post to one of the critique groups instead (see list of related subs in the sidebar).

THIS IS NOT A PLACE WHERE THE WORK GETS DONE FOR YOU so all shopped images included in a response for help will be removed unless you: A) Lower its resolution and/or watermark it and B) Provide an explanation of the steps taken in your edit.

WHAT FONT IS THIS? and IS THIS PHOTOSHOPPED? type posts will be removed.

PIRACY -- Posts and comments about DRM circumventing / file sharing of Photoshop or any other commercial software will result in a permanent ban.

NO DOCUMENT FORGERY -- Asking how to alter official papers, ID cards, licenses, masking signatures and removing watermarks will also result in a permanent ban.

NSFW posts are not allowed here.

NO LINK SHORTENERS of any kind.

USE DESCRIPTIVE TITLES -- All upper case and URGENT! posts will also be removed.

NO PHOTOSHOP REQUESTS!

GENERAL

Help others learn and improve their skills. Explain what you did as much as possible.

Message the mods if you think you are getting blocked by the spam filter or have any questions, comments or suggestions.

I started back in the 90s with Photoshop 3, working with my highschool newspaper. I've kind of grown up with the program. Mostly self-taught, or learned more in my jobs with photographers / photo agencies. Some of the NAPP / Layers magazine stuff helped me along, with books, online tutorials, and a workshop from time to time.

Since there are so many ways to do similar things, it's helpful to work with others who use the program.

Man, I remember decking out my MySpace with all these fancy designs and stuff I made in Photoshop. I felt like some sort of internet king, with a MySpace page whose beauty was unparalleled. Man, was I stupid.

My senior year in college I had an 'oh shit' moment knowing my liberal arts degree wouldn't be too useful. I bought a book called Photoshop Classroom in a Book and taught myself. I also bought an HTML book, and I've been a designer ever since. Probably the most important decision I've ever made.

I played around with it and then took courses in college. Exploring and playing around with it first is the best way to get familiar with the program. If you ever take night courses or read books or go on Reddit or go to college, having an understanding of where everything is will be very helpful.

I learned mostly from self education, including DVD's and books. Just playing around with the software isn't always the best way to learn, you can end up getting a similar result but not understanding why it's inferior. A classic example of a self education blip would be using the wrong selection tools and not understanding why they're wrong. This is why you'll often hear people say things like "there's a million ways to get the same result", "do what's best for you!", obviously there is an exception to the rule, but for the majority of the time, this is complete crap. The results are rarely exactly the same. They might look similar, but when you analyse them closely, they're quite different. This is where the DVDs and books helped me. I also watched the DVDs over and over. I discovered that I had to go in with the attitude I knew nothing, otherwise I'd switch off and not pick up the bits I didn't know (a lot of the content in DVDs are painfully obvious but so long as you can pick up a few things from them, they've served you well.)

It's definitely a mixture between classes to gain an initial foothold and practical tinkering to gain a true understanding, in my mind! I started out with the PSDTutsplus Photoshop Basix course - it's online video-based short "lessons" of 10 minutes each will give you that initial understanding at no cost!

Started with simple things on YouTube... Like blemish removal, then masks, just kept watching videos and practicing. I'm not that great tho, as I've just learned some tricks in camera raw, still learning.

Mostly by watching tutorials on Youtube and around the net, starting with basic ones first then more and more advanced. Found a few good tutorial websites too. As for practice I did a combination of messing around with my own photos, attempting various /r/picrequests requests and duplicating tutorial projects.

I started after seeing some custom covers people made on the NeoGaf forums and thought "I want to do that." From there it was trial and error, pressing buttons and adjusting sliders just to see what they did. I'd think of what I wanted to do and if I didn't know how, there were plenty of tutorials online. Now I at least have some vague idea of what I'm doing and can turn out something that looks halfway decent.

I learned by competing in worth 1000 tournaments as a kid. Tutorials on their site and around the Internet helped me learn skills. Then I got into photography and learned more processing/editing styles.

I started by playing around with the first CS. I learned the basics of retouching by enhanching /r/gonewild like images and I learned precision adjustments when I started freelancing and removing backgrounds from product shots of shoes. Later I went to school for photography and learned about workflow. I used Martin Evening's CS3 for photographers as a reference manual. I probably never would have taken Photoshop seriously if I hadn't taken that production job and been forced to befriend the pen tool.

Started with Photoshop 2.5 while working in the games industry, working on UI designs. Had previously been using Deluxe Paint and Brilliance but as soon as I started using PS I never looked back. Everything I've learned has been self taught.

I used to be a guy on Youtube who made tutorials for Photoshop but before that I just randomly got it from my recollection. To learn a few things, I used to look at other tutorials on the net to find out how to do things and then the years progressed, (that was 5 years ago, I'm 17 now) and I consider myself as been pretty good with Photoshop. I love it, I always help out my friends and when I am so bored, I make things!

I just started. I'm coming from Fireworks as a Web Developer/Designer. Fireworks is such a great tool but I feel the writing is on the wall as it gets little support from Adobe. So I subscribed to the cloud (Photoshop only) the other day and I hope to get better at web designs, layouts, as well as mobile.

My stepdad worked in web design in the mid 90s to eary 00s. He had Photoshop 5 on his iMac which I played with a lot. I was about 8 or 9 at the time.

It was mostly drawings and doodles, but also a bunch of CD covers for my pirated (?) music. Later on I made some "pixel art" as well, probably inspired by Pokémon and Habbo Hotel, both of which I spent disturbingly long hours with.

My grandma loved Photography so she has Photoshop to edit her photos. Then my Dad was in the states and find Elements cheap so he brought it back and I started messing around with it then, creating signature graphics for gaming forums. Good times :)

In 2000 I joined some random forums where we made things in photoshop to amuse ourselves. Sigs, gifs, and other things were made very quickly to one up each other. It was easy to learn when I was having fun.

Honestly? Pirated it, dinked around with it, and read online tutorials and grew comfortable with it in my teenage years. Now I use it professionally (and legally!) and make sure to watch YouTube tutorials when new features come out. I've been using it since version 4.0 and to this day use it daily.

I started almost eight years ago now, because I wanted to make cool looking forum signatures like I saw on a lot of the gaming/graphics forums I frequented. I made some pretty1weird2stuff3 , but through learning how to do all of that I also learned a great deal of other things.

I soon started creating "abstract digital art" (shudder), where I learned even more, from the inner workings of Photoshop and just how powerful a tool it is, to lots of stuff about art and art history, what makes a picture interesting, etc.

And eventually, after several years, I started to apply my knowledge and homemade experience to real-life projects. I still mainly do it as a hobby, but I use what I've learned in many other areas in my life, from web design to photography and photo retouching. It's been quite a ride. :)